


He doesn't make your heart race

by 3sti



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Aromantic, Asexual Character, Gen, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, LGBTQ Themes, POV Second Person, Post-Canon, Self-Discovery, Self-Indulgent, i say post-canon but it's before the timeskip, they're third years and in university, yamayachi isn't endgame
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-12
Updated: 2020-04-12
Packaged: 2021-03-02 05:41:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23610100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/3sti/pseuds/3sti
Summary: He doesn’t make your heart race, and you don’t feel any butterflies in your stomach when you look at him. But he does make you feel at ease, that it’s alright to be just you.Or, a journey of self-exploration and acceptance when you seem to be different from everyone.
Relationships: Tsukishima Kei & Yamaguchi Tadashi, minor Yamaguchi Tadashi/Yachi Hitoka
Comments: 10
Kudos: 24





	He doesn't make your heart race

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first attempt at writing after 5+ years, and there are probably a lot of mistakes, but please be gentle. ^^

You are seventeen and a girl from your class drags you behind the school building. She asks if you rejected her because you had a crush on someone. You don’t understand why you need to have a crush on anyone at all. You realize the closest you’ve ever been to feeling love was the admiration for an upperclassman with unruly hair and a teasing grin. He helped you grow and you defeated him. That was two years ago and you haven’t met ever since. You don’t really miss him anymore, you never really did.

During lunch breaks, Hinata talks about Kageyama’s tosses and Brazil and, sometimes, girls. He has a type: cute ones with long dark hair. You don’t understand why looks matter so much. “Personality and appearance are both important,” is his answer. There’s some truth in that: they’d have to be neat, you don’t talk to unkempt people. Hinata says you are missing the point.

You probably are, but you really think that it’s not important. They just need to have an interesting and nice personality or something. The problem is that you’ve never met anyone with a personality that would get to you like that. You probably have high standards.

Yamaguchi stopped asking about crushes sometime in middle school. You wish Hinata would too. You wish Yamaguchi wouldn’t look at you like he wants to ask about it. You would say “Shut up, Yamaguchi,” and he would reply “Sorry, Tsukki” as always. He would look like he doesn’t pity you.

You walk home with Yamaguchi twice a week. Yachi gets the other days, and they look at each other like in the movies, and you think that love can be real. You think that one day, probably, a girl will come who is just perfect for you and then you will finally understand what everyone is talking about. Until then you don’t feel the need to chase it. You are fine with your friends. 

Yamaguchi’s parents visit relatives during the summer vacation. You practically live with him for a whole week, you watch movies, walk the dog in the evening, and eat dinner together. It’s stupidly domestic. It’s the best summer you’ve ever had.

You get accepted to your first choice of university. It’s a completely different major from your best friend’s and you end up in different dorms. “Sendai isn’t a big city,” you both say, and make plans for every week. You explore the city with Yamaguchi and Yachi, you go to the library to study as if you had anything common in your programs. His roommates expect you every other Tuesday night. You get takeout or popcorn and watch shitty movies in his room.

Your roommate, Shima, comes out as gay. He’s not the first queer person you’ve met in your life, not after playing volleyball in high school. You tell him about really short volleyball shorts and the players everyone was really thirsty for in the prefecture. It turns out that he follows Oikawa Tooru on vine (of course Oikawa has vine). You become friends.

When you pay a bit less attention to the teacher than to the kind-of-cute boy sitting next to you, you think you might be bisexual.

One day your roommate sexiles you from the room and you go to a café to study. You don’t study at all — you think about normal things that, for some reason, make you feel uncomfortable in your own body. You know that your roommate is having sex right now. You understand that your best friend has sex with Yachi, they’ve been dating for a year, after all. You try to focus on the flavor of the coffee instead. It’s just weird to think about. It shouldn’t be, because everyone does it. Except you. You say you are busy studying. It’s true because you like your major. It’s bullshit because you’re bingeing a series with three seasons instead of reading for classes or working on that assignment.

You get home tipsy after going out with some classmates; you tell your roommate about bisexuality. He thinks you are not that. You know he’s right, because when you imagined being with a boy it wasn’t good, and it was worse with a girl. When you wake up the next morning you don’t know what you are. It’s not a good feeling.

You go home for the summer holidays and you can forget about everything that has to do with college. You spend most of your time with Yamaguchi and it feels like this and Sendai are two different worlds. It’s not that university is bad — you like your major, your new friends, that the city is alive even after 6pm, and that you can stay at Yamaguchi’s dorm room until the last bus at midnight. But meeting him almost every day like this can make all the difference. You can just be, and not worry about anything. After seven years of friendship, you start calling each other by your first names, at least sometimes.

Before going back for the second term you find out about asexuality on the internet. Finally, you don’t stay up until 4am feeling like you’re broken, like something’s wrong with you. You also find out about aromanticism. It feels radical, but then you remember how you always say that you hate romantic movies. You want to believe the blog posts that say it’s okay to be like that.

Everything falls into place, everything feels easier. It’s probably not ideal or normal in the sense others want you to be, but you can finally stop waiting for the moment when that perfect girl steps in your life — that always seemed unrealistic anyway. The truth is that you don’t want a girlfriend, or a boyfriend. You are perfectly content with your friends. You tell Yamaguchi. He doesn’t understand but he’s supportive.

Your roommate takes you to a party at the beginning of the term. The music is bad and everyone is making out. You realize that such level of kissing makes you uncomfortable so you flee to the nearest McDonald’s. Your roommate gets you a milkshake. He doesn’t seem surprised; he says it’s because you hardly let anyone touch or hug you. He doesn’t ask but you tell him, and you talk about how ridiculous it seems that some people just see another person and want to jump at them immediately. He laughs like it’s a joke, and the next day you print out pride flags to decorate the room.

You see a movie and you don’t hate the romantic arc. Probably because it’s not too cheesy and sappy, and it doesn’t involve any teenagers with unrealistic dreams. You don’t feel alone but you think that a relationship like that could be nice. You could have done without the sex scene, though. That makes you think that nobody “normal” would put up with you in an actual relationship. It’s a good thing you don’t really want one.

You visit Akiteru on the weekend. He lives alone and he desperately wants a girlfriend. You start fantasizing about adult life, working and going home, to your own home. It still feels too distant to think about that. Right now you are happy with chatting Yamaguchi every day, meeting him almost every week, and sometimes third wheeling when he goes out with Yachi. It’s not awkward at all, it feels like you’re back in high school second year.

Yamaguchi and Yachi break up at the end of second year and you know you’re not the first person he goes to. It’s not like you could understand him. It still makes you sad. You’ve already realized that there are some topics that just never come up anymore. It’s lonely not hearing about a whole aspect of their lives.

You get a new roommate and you don’t feel like coming out to him. You took down the pride flags when Shima graduated and moved out. Sometimes you message him and sometimes you meet up. You get used to the new one surprisingly easily, but you know you won’t really be friends.

Yamaguchi finds a new series that is absolutely terrible but you just can’t not like the protagonist. His roommates hate it and never watch it with you. Sometimes you google it and accidentally spoil the next two episodes for yourself, and then send Yamaguchi the best hypotheses about the main character’s past. You have a ton of classes and tests but you always make time for these movie nights.

Yachi gets a new boyfriend and he is surprisingly okay. Well, he is surprising — you are surprised. You thought she would want to wait a few more months or something. You really don’t understand how attraction works. You want to spend time with her but then it’s like she has to go home at midnight, or that you want to talk to her but half the time her boyfriend is with her. You don’t hate the guy, but he’s not Yamaguchi, you won’t act the same around him. It kind of sucks when other people are in a relationship and you are left out. Sometimes you feel alone.

You don’t meet up with Yamaguchi every week now, and you chat less often. Sometimes that makes you anxious, you feel like you’re losing your best friend. On other days, though, you can have a deep conversation that is not just one of you ranting about a difficult test or a movie, and you really hope that you are okay. It would be better if you could meet more often, but you both have to study so much that the only emotion you feel is tired. Maybe except when you are with him. Sometimes you curl up in the cozy blanket and when you look at him you think you might be okay with kissing. You don’t know what to do with the thought and you shove it away quickly.

When your dad drives you home for winter break he asks if you have a girlfriend or something going on. You want to laugh. You really hope Akiteru gets a girlfriend soon. You don’t know what is more mortifying: the thought that you might never be able to be with someone, or that the only person you might tolerate is a boy.

You think about what your life will look like after graduation. You want an apartment like Akiteru has, with a small balcony. You want a roommate, partly because it’s cheaper and partly because you want to be less alone. You want to watch movies with them, and play video games. Maybe adopt a cat, and a few plants. Take photos and put them in frames. You can’t decide if you would want one or two bedrooms, and it’s confusing.

Yamaguchi gets wasted at a party and accepts the challenge to kiss another boy. He does it like it’s normal for boys to kiss other boys. He doesn’t remember it the next morning, though. You think about how a relationship with him would be and then you realize that there are a lot of things that he would normally do but you are not comfortable with. You wonder if it’s possible to be somewhere between ‘no to everything’ and ‘yes to everything’. You imagine it’s not something that people are usually okay with.

You finally become a regular on your volleyball team and you’ll have a match a few weeks later. You meet up for dinner with Yamaguchi and Yachi to celebrate it and they promise to go see you play. You drink wine and catch up, stay until the restaurant closes, then Yachi goes home, and Yamaguchi invites you to his room for a bit, because his dorm is close by. His roommates are out to party; you get all the fluffy blankets and watch stupid videos from high school. At some point you gather the courage to ask if it’d be okay to hug a bit. He says yes.

You remember that back in high school you and Yamaguchi already planned to be roommates. Then he started dating Yachi and you thought that you could forget that dream. Now you are a bit happy that they broke up, even though you know that you would never be able to be in a relationship like that. You still don’t know if you should want two bedrooms or the far end of a double bed.

When you learn about queerplatonic relationships you tell him. It’s not a confession and you don’t ask him to do anything. You just state that it’s something you can be comfortable with. It’s like friends with benefits, but the benefits would be… in your case, cuddling and holding hands. Perhaps kissing. And who knows what the future will bring. 

You are lying in bed with a hangover — you had to celebrate the victory —, and you think about all the things that led up to you standing on the court yesterday. You have to realize once again that Tadashi’s always been there with you. You are so familiar at this point, it would surprise you if someone came into your life and became more important than him. You think about family; your parents probably expect a wife and then children. It won’t happen but that’s alright. For you, your friends are good enough. And Tadashi, he is perhaps a bit more than just a friend, and you’ve been together for so long that at this point you know that it’ll last forever. You hope that you can spend that forever as close to him as possible.

When you ask if he still wants to move in with you, he says yes with a bright smile. He gets excited and starts planning the whole thing just for fun, without looking at the budget. He tells you about the view from the windows, waking up and going to work in the morning, a coffee machine, and a bathtub your long limbs can’t comfortably fit into. You jokingly quote some anime: “if you want to get married I’m okay with that,” and it really is a joke, but in that moment you almost feel like you would really do it.

Yachi helps you look for apartments. It feels like you’re back in high school third year looking at universities, but this time you get the happy ending with Tadashi. She finds you a place with a tiny bedroom, the most comfortable couch in existence (it’s really ugly, though), and a surprisingly cute and cozy study corner. You fill the apartment with your belongings: those favourite mugs you’ve been using since you were kids, your favourite books about dinosaurs and space, Tadashi’s family photos and your medals from when you almost won the nationals with Karasuno. You also get things to share: soap so you will smell similar, a coffee machine, a calendar, and expensive mochi as a treat for big occasions.

It feels strange but in a good way, like you get filled up with happiness — even though you were never empty to begin with. He doesn’t make your heart race, and you don’t feel any butterflies in your stomach when you look at him. But he does make you feel at ease, that it’s alright to be just you. You volunteer to sleep on the couch and he gets a cookbook to learn to make food with better nutritioning. You’re excited to see how your relationship will change now that you are adults and live together, it’s ridiculously domestic and you love it. You’re looking forward sharing your life with him. You’re the most complete you’ve ever felt.


End file.
